In what ended up being a series of post on context and change, I have established (or hopefully managed to do that) a few fundamentals:
Our work human systems should be seeing more with a natural science, ecology metaphor; thus, a lot more goes on and we can’t predict future behaviour on the basis of past, and feedback loops ‘nudge’ the system in ways that may lead into unprecedented impact.
Being aware of that chance, in general, should lead us to favour incremental changes, where we can better control the nearly certain unintended consequences in a ‘safer to fail’ basis. Put in other words, not putting too much at bet.
But that, there is a place for more abrupt interventions, and that in fact sometimes you will deliberately go for it, even if it is to bring up novelty and let new ways to emerge. In fact, sometimes you will have to do it precisely because of too many opportunities for incremental changes were missed, and the system got to a level of perceived order, which is artificial, and you are sort of stuck.
There is one aspect which I alluded to in one of the previous posts, but didn’t get to further elaborate on. So here we are…
How can we ‘nudge’ the system without incurring reckless risks?!
Assuming you are not too much of a gambler yourself, so you don’t want to be too much at mercy of luck; how could we figure out what does ‘incremental’ mean in context?
According to Dave Snowden, and his work on applying complexity theory to practice in decision making and knowledge management, it is all about granularity, finding out what is the sort of optimal level of detail that produces replicable results (and still somewhat coherent to the context, thus it doesn’t require an unfeasible level of energy and time to be functioning within the system). In evolutionary terms, we know now that adaptations which prevail do so in a combination of their utility or fitness to purpose, as well being efficient in allowing that within reasonable level of effort.
All good on paper, right?! But what does that mean, in more practical terms?
By now you should know enough to imagine that I won’t provide a simple answer to a question which is very much subject to context – and changing a complex system will never be context-free. But there is useful heuristics (rules which are not hard or deterministic in nature but rather offer a way to get to results which are sufficient in the context) which we can apply in practice:
Don’t bother changing aspects which require high level of energy and take too much time to be changed (Dave Snowden uses the physics ‘counterfactual’, as in very unlikely to change).
Worry about aspects which require low level of energy and take little time to change (what is worth protecting need some barrier - Dave Snowden calls that ‘vulnerability’ border).
Focus on changing in the areas in-between: takes some level of effort and time to change – the lower the level of energy and time required, the more room for incremental experimentation; else, more thinking and designing (how to approach) is in order.
Put in simpler words, and as more practical guidance, the subject of direct intervention should be more granular (at optimal level) in nature, so to produce coherent replicable results regardless of context, and such a way that are feasible – we can do something about it – from an energy and time perspective.
That would typically tell us we are the real of ‘practices’ and ‘processes’; not on directly acting on ‘culture’ or the ‘values’ of an organization. Those are in fact emerging properties, largely influenced by the much more granular and nuanced actual ways go about things, in practice.
Yet too often we see big attempts of changes that seem to start exactly from the upside down… Going full scale on a transformation initiative, implementing a new methodology or method suddenly. Or even worse, getting obsessed about changing people behaviour by focusing on their ‘mindset’ change.
Getting it upside down, it is not only a recipe for failure, it is arguably ethical – but that is a topic for later diving. So, if you like it, stay tune, subscribe, engage – I will surely like to “hear” your thoughts or just “hear” your feedback on what I am doing here.
by Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect (I only refuse invites from people clearly with an agenda to ‘coldly’ sell something to me), happy to engage and interact.